Selling Homosexuality to America

Among America's culture wars, one of today's most intense controversies rages around the issue alternatively identified, depending on one's point of view, as "normalizing homosexuality" or "accepting gayness." The debate is truly a social-ethical-moral conceptual war that transcends both the scientific and legal, though science and law most often are the weapons of choice. The ammunition for these weapons, however, is persuasion.

This article explores how gay rights [3] activists use rhetoric, psychology, social psychology, and the media — all the elements of modern marketing — to position homosexuality in order to frame what is discussed in the public arena and how it is discussed. In essence, when it comes to homosexuality, activists want to shape "what everyone knows" and "what everyone takes for granted" even if everyone does not really know and even if it should not be taken for granted. [4]

The first strategy of persuasion is to establish a favorable climate for your message so that the communicator (marketer) can influence the future decision without even appearing to be persuading. Pratkanis and Aronson refer to this as pre-selling. [5] This is at the heart of the homosexual campaign: to get consent via social construct today to determine whose idea of personal freedoms will prevail in our legal codes tomorrow.

Part II of this article provides a brief overview of the social climate and politics that ultimately led to the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) imprimatur of homosexual behavior. The declassification of homosexuality as a disorder by the APA provides context for the propaganda war proposed by Kirk and Madsen's homosexual manifesto fifteen years later. The section ends by reviewing the main elements of the campaign including the call to specifically discredit, intimidate, and silence opponents with particular attention paid to conservative Christians.

Part III presents the connection between persuasion and democratic processes. Rhetoric, persuasive communication, propaganda, and social psychology theories are foundational to the concept of selling homosexuality as presented in this article. The purpose of this section is to provide a greater understanding of why persuasion works in order to strengthen the later discussion of how it is applied in the mass persuasion techniques evidenced in today's "gay rights"-style marketing.

Part IV moves to the "4-P's" of the traditional marketing paradigm — Product, Price, Place, and Promotion — to deconstruct and to illustrate how homosexuality is packaged and sold as a competitive product in the marketplace often through education [6] and through positive media coverage. "What is pitched is different — a product brand versus an issue — but the method is the same. In each case, the critical thing is not to let the public know how it is done," [7] states Tammy Bruce, a self-described lesbian feminist and ex-president of the Los Angles chapter of the National Organization for Women. [8]

Part V presents several real examples of how this strategy is employed in five important markets of social influence. The areas examined, which touch every citizen in America, are government, education, organized religion, the media, and the workplace.

Part VI concludes by recapping some achievements of the gay rights campaign and discussing what these may portend for their opponents and American society in the future.

The declassification of homosexuality as a disorder by the APA provides context for the propaganda war proposed by Kirk and Madsen's homosexual manifesto fifteen years later. The section ends by reviewing the main elements of the campaign including the call to specifically discredit, intimidate, and silence opponents with particular attention paid to conservative Christians."

The Overhauling of Straight America

"The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: she likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.
At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full 'appreciation' or 'understanding' of homosexuality from the average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to the shoulder- shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome, and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America. And any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should do six things.
(1) Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible. The principle behind this advice is simple: almost any behavior begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your acquaintances. The acceptability of the new behavior will ultimately hinge on the number of one’s fellows doing it or accepting it...
The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality is to have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral or supportive way. Open and frank talk makes the subject seem less furtive, alien, and sinful, more above-board. Constant talk builds the impression that the public opinion is at least divided on the subject, and that a sizable segment accepts or even practices homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and defenders serve the purpose of desensitization so long as 'respectable' gays are front and center to make their own pitch. The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome.
And when we say talk about homosexuality, we mean just that. In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America, the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible. First let the camel get his nose inside the tent -- and only later his unsightly derriere! ...
(5) Make the victimizers look bad. At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights -- long after other gay ads have become commonplace -- it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be vilified. (This will be all the more necessary because, by that time, the entrenched enemy will have quadrupled its output of vitriol and disinformation.) Our goal here is twofold. First, we week to replace the mainstream’s self-righteous pride about its homophobia with shame and guilty. Second, we intend to make the anti-gays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.
The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle America. These images might include the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the “fags” they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.
A campaign to vilify the victimizers is going to enrage our most fervid enemies, of course. But what else can we say? The shoe fits, and we should make them try it on for size, with all of America watching..."

The Homosexual Propaganda and Media Manipulation Game

What Homosexuals Say About Homosexuals - Is This Gay Behavior Sick?

Me thinks you're obfuscating by bringing up something ugly like pedophilia. What reason is there to bring it up otherwise?

Tammy Bruce: Protect New York's Children from the Gay Elite

"In my book The Death of Right and Wrong I warn about the sexualization and targeting of children by the radical gay fringe...
Do not be cowed with arguments that if you’re against this you’re a “homophobe.” In fact, the unforgivable crime is if we remain silent allowing children to be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, as we sit and watch gay malignant narcissists make a wild grab for children. Well, it won’t be done in my name, and I contend that every decent hetero- and homosexual person out there should be equally outraged by this hideous action.
Not all of this, however, is inexplicable. As I outline in detail in DRW, there is a sick movement among the homosexual academics and the radical gay fringe to change the age of sexual consent in this nation to 12-years-old. As sexually transmitted diseases for both hetero- and homosexuals increases and HIV/AIDS runs rampant, the goal by some to have access to children (untouched virgins, free of disease) has increased...
Think about it: we’re talking about children who are not psychologically mature enough to decide what to have for dinner, let along comprehend the intricacies of sexuality and all its physical and psychological repercussions. But the Gay Elite want us to believe that somehow these children know they prefer to have anal sex or need their breasts removed to find their “true” selves. Yeah, and I’m Anna Nicole Smith.
I cannot even begin to express my rage at a radical gay fringe and leftists who now are openly and willingly sacrificing children in a vain and self-obsessed drive to quench their own appetites for the young. That’s all this amounts to—adults indulging themselves, and others made too mute by political correctness to step up and say "No."

"Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered (The taboo against sex with children continues to erode)

"This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, however—unlike those against, say, animal sex or incest—is apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex—more accurately, man-boy sex—is now out in the open. Moreover, it is on parade in a number of places—therapeutic, literary, and academic circles; mainstream publishing houses and journals and magazines and bookstores—where the mere appearance of such ideas would until recently have been not only unthinkable, but in many cases, subject to prosecution...
Two examples from the last few weeks will suffice to show the double standard here. In the November 12 New York Times Book Review, a writer found it unremarkable to observe of his subject, biographer Gavin Lambert, that when "Lambert was a schoolboy of 11, a teacher initiated him [into homosexuality], and he 'felt no shame or fear, only gratitude.'" It is unimaginable that New York Times editors would allow a reviewer to describe an 11-year-old girl being sexually "initiated" by any adult (in that case, "initiation" would be called "sexual abuse"). Similarly, in mid-December the New York Times Magazine delivered a cover piece about gay teenagers in cyberspace which was so blasé about the older men who seek out boys in chat rooms that it dismissed those potential predators as mere "oldies." Again, one can only imagine the public outcry had the same magazine published a story taking the same so-what approach to online solicitation, off-line trysts, and pornography "sharing" between anonymous men and underage girls...
Of course, this opus that "gay studies" bookshelves now reserve space for did not spring from nowhere. The book itself grew out of two issues of the American Journal of Homosexuality (Vol. 20, Nos. 1/2, 1990) dedicated to the pondering of "male inter-generational love." Here again, an ostensibly mainstream gay vehicle was put to the service of advocating pedophilia. In fact, the case of the Journal of Homosexuality is particularly interesting as a case study of how a pernicious idea can spread. The editor of this reputable gay journal, John P. DeCecco, is a psychologist at San Francisco State University. DeCecco is favorably quoted in the introduction to Male Inter-Generational Intimacy for having praised the "enormously nurturant relationship" that can result from pedophile-boy contact. DeCecco is also on the editorial board of Paidika..."

The Problem of Pedophilia

"Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover reflects on the Journal of Homosexuality's "Male Intergenerational Intimacy":

"This special issue reflects the substantial, influential, and growing segment of the homosexual community that neither hides nor condemns pedophilia. Rather they argue that pedophilia is an acceptable aspect of sexuality, especially of homosexuality. Indeed, the San Francisco Sentinel, a Bay Area gay-activist newspaper, published a piece arguing that pedophilia is central to male homosexual life" (7).

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